felix dakat wrote:I think Phenomenal Graffiti's metaphysical subjective system in service of the afterlife is motivated by denial of death and the psychological trauma of the specter of eternal punishment.

I don't want to speculate on PG's motives, but isn't what you are saying a very large part of all organized religions? Fear is a powerful motivator and while all the goodies of heaven are promised, it is the fear of losing self that figures heavily in all afterlife stories. The fear of eternal punishment is just icing on the cake. There is nothing wrong with buying fire insurance and this all hinges on the belief that there is an afterlife, which may or may not be accurate.

IGAYRCCFYVMSorry, arguing with the ignorant is like trying to wrestle with a jellyfish. No matter how many tentacles you cut off there are always more, and there isn't even a brain to stun. - Maia

felix dakat wrote:I think Phenomenal Graffiti's metaphysical subjective system in service of the afterlife is motivated by denial of death and the psychological trauma of the specter of eternal punishment.

I don't want to speculate on PG's motives, but isn't what you are saying a very large part of all organized religions? Fear is a powerful motivator and while all the goodies of heaven are promised, it is the fear of losing self that figures heavily in all afterlife stories. The fear of eternal punishment is just icing on the cake. There is nothing wrong with buying fire insurance and this all hinges on the belief that there is an afterlife, which may or may not be accurate.

The icing on what cake? The following passage captures the problem in satire:

In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave.

This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.

The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it.

Now here is a curious thing. It is believed by everybody that while he was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous, and cruel; but that when he came down to earth and assumed the name Jesus Christ, he became the opposite of what he was before: that is to say, he became sweet, and gentle, merciful, forgiving, and all harshness disappeared from his nature and a deep and yearning love for his poor human children took its place.

Whereas it was as Jesus Christ that he devised hell and proclaimed it! Which is to say, that as the meek and gentle Savior he was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament -- oh, incomparably more atrocious than ever he was when he was at the very worst in those old days!

Sorry for the (very) late response. Holiday jingles juggled with crafting the conclusion of the afterlife argument.

We all hold the view that there is a real world that exists independently of us, independently of our experiences, our thoughts, and our language prereflectively so that any departure from that view like yours requires a conscious effort and a convincing argument.

Most hold the view that there is a 'real world that exists independently of us, independently of our experiences' etc. that contains "real world" analogs of the content of visual perception. What takes conscious effort is imagining what "real world" chairs, for example, might be like, as they are chairs in the absence of a person's perception of them or in the absence of any and all consciousness altogether. A person's perception of a chair disappears when the person shifts attention, falls unconscious, or dies while a "real world" chair does not disappear or wink out of existence in response to this sudden and unexpected loss of self and consciousness.

If "real world" chairs do not wink out of existence in response to sudden loss of perception of chairs, "real world" chairs and perceived chairs are not one and the same thing. They are different existences. "Real world" chairs, therefore, are not made of subjective experience, as in the common view of consciousness and how consciousness comes to exist, consciousness did not exist before there were brains, can only exist when produced by brains, and cease to exist upon loss of function of the brain.

"Real world" analogs of the content of visual perception, meanwhile, are not created by brains and thus continue to existence when "perception" of these objects, which are created by brains and require brains in order to exist, wink out of existence (for those believing consciousness can cease to exist, that is) in response to dysfunction or cessation of function of the brain. But the only thing that we see and can see, is the thing created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). We cannot see "real world" chairs or analogs of the content of visual perception because these are not created by the brain. Like God for the religious person, and as Kant observed, the existence of "real world" objects that are the foundations, causes, and analogs of the objects seen in consciousness is supported only by faith.

Why?

Because we can only see and experience our consciousness. The thing that supposedly winks out of existence when the brain stops functioning. We cannot see or experience things that are not our consciousness. Thus we have no evidence of their existence. The same argument against God in terms of the connection between God and our perception, it turns out, also applies to external world objects believed to be the analogs of the content of our visual perception.

If one thinks good to simply remove the existence of "real world" analogs of the content of visual perception, why, that leaves our subjective experience as the only thing that is truly real. If subjective experience is the only thing that is real, the world we perceive must be and can only be a virtual or artificial reality composed only of our subjective experience. Empirically, as in, "hands on" observation of reality, this hypothesis is readily evident because it's right in front of our eyes every second we're awake. Unconscious matter or "real world" things that are not our consciousness or that are imagined to be things that can exist in the absence of all consciousness we have no evidence for (as all we can experience is our consciousness) and may not exist.

May have to politely disagree. It takes "magic" to make the leap from something that is not subjective experience producing or becoming subjective experience as an explanation for the origin of consciousness, as opposed to the non-magical simplicity of, say, having subjective experience eternally exist the whole time in some form, negating the need for something having to produce or transform into it.

It seems you're using magic pejoratively to imply impossibility whereas evolution of consciousness from unconscious matter is a possibility albeit unexplained. The hypothesis that "subjective experience eternally exist[ed]" requires an infinite leap. So, agnosticism appears to be the epistemological correct position with regard to this issue at this time.

Evolution of consciousness re: subjective experience or the fact or act of subjectively experiencing arising from unconscious matter is only a "possibility" only if that which is not subjective experience or is not the fact or act of subjectively experience either:

1. Stops being something that is not subjective experience to magically transform into subjective experience or

-Unconscious matter is not simply matter that is not conscious, but matter that is not consciousness.

-Unconscious matter is believed to become consciousness or consciousness is believed to "arise from" or originate from unconscious matter.

But:

1. Unconscious matter is not the fact or act of experiencing or someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone.

2. But it is commonly believed that one day, after an eternity of not being someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone, unconscious matter contorts itself into a brain that either conjures someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone from non-existence, or parts of the brain, which is made up of something that is not someone experiencing or that which someone experiences magically stops being something that is not someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone to become someone experiencing and that which is experience by someone.

It is just becomes subjective experience.

How does it get from not being subjective experience to being subjective experience?

You’re response to this is: “We can’t explain it, but trust me, it happens. You're supposed to believe that this is irrefutably reality, this is the way things are.”

To me this insistence upon unconscious matter and it's magical, yes, probably impossible relation to experiencing ultimately stems from disbelief that subjective experience is probably eternal. It certainly does not come from and can have no support from experiment, as experiment requires and is materially composed of subjective experience and the only thing we can experience is subjective experience. Unconscious matter is something that is not subjective experience: we cannot experience something that is not our subjective experience.

Why not believe that subjective experience is eternal? We accept that physical energy is eternal without question, when we can't even know physical energy even exists because the only existence we have evidence of is our consciousness.

At the end of the day, we're talking brute transformation of something into something it is not, simply because one does not wish to believe in the eternal existence of something, but wishes to believe in the eternal existence of something the something one does not want to believe is eternal is not (whew).

Now that---positing that eternal unconscious matter inexplicably becomes someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone---requires more of an infinite leap than just stating that consciousness has always existed. After all, existence only appears or manifests in the form of someone and the which someone experiences. It does not appear in any other manner. Why jump to something that is not someone and that which someone experiences to explain the existence of someone and that which someone experiences? Why do we need the opposite of consciousness to explain consciousness? Why is unconscious matter even necessary, save only because one does not believe in eternal consciousness?

Unconscious matter is simply an idea created by consciousness with the intelligence to imagine something other than itself. But the only thing it can experience is itself. Consciousness cannot rid itself of itself. And can only use itself to try to imagine something that is not itself, an impossible feat. In service to Occam's Razor, it is far simpler to posit that consciousness is eternal than to try to conjure it from something it is not.

Thank you for your condolence. My belief is not actually motivated by anxiety, but careful observation of the nature of experienced reality and its subtle implications. I used this previous collection of inductions and hypotheses in time of grief to formulate a logical possibility regarding the fate of consciousness after death.

That sounds like psychologically motivated denial to me. Why would anyone spend as much time, and energy on arguments for an afterlife as you have on this website over the years if it were not motivated by the anxiety about death?

Touche. A mea culpa is in order. I do have anxiety about death and it admittedly does motivate my argument for an afterlife, but the anxiety is not the sole motivation. The logical possibility of the afterlife, given the existence and possibilities inherent within consciousness or the notion of consciousness also drive the argument. If one can posit "real world" analogs of the content of visual perception that existed before or consists of a substance that is not consciousness, with these analogs unable to appear within consciousness because they are not consciousness, one can posit the afterlife and God. In fact, it is far simpler for the latter than the former to logically exist, as the latter consists of consciousness and is not something that is not consciousness. That being said, the real existence of the afterlife, if it is a reality, is a reality regardless of my anxiety about death. The strength of my argument for an afterlife ultimately lies in the conceptual fact that anxiety about death does not nor cannot in itself falsify the existence of the afterlife if the afterlife objectively exists.

Everything that is a human product is questionable. The thing is, the Bible (or parts of it) may be absolutely correct about the nature of and persons in the external world despite our disbelief.

And hence your existential anxiety about it. The best we can do is live according to what seems to us as individuals to be the case with regard to ultimate realty. And what seems to be the case changes with experience over time.

As before, my existential anxiety does not by it's presence falsify nor indicate the falsity of the Bible in regard to its metaphysical assertions regarding the afterlife or the existence of God and persons in the external world. In the end, it does not matter if I have existential anxiety about death or worry if indeed it is eternal cessation of consciousness: the anxiety does not by its presence indicate or reveal the non-existence of God or the afterlife.______________________________________________________________________________________________________Response to felix dekat's post made 10-13-18 6:50pm

I think Phenomenal Graffiti's metaphysical subjective system in service of the afterlife is motivated by denial of death and the psychological trauma of the specter of eternal punishment.

But we can't know that death (in terms of eternal and irreversible loss of self or consciousness) happens or is the actual fact of things.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________Response to felix dekat's post made 11:27pm

In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave.

This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.

The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it.

Now here is a curious thing. It is believed by everybody that while he was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous, and cruel; but that when he came down to earth and assumed the name Jesus Christ, he became the opposite of what he was before: that is to say, he became sweet, and gentle, merciful, forgiving, and all harshness disappeared from his nature and a deep and yearning love for his poor human children took its place.

Whereas it was as Jesus Christ that he devised hell and proclaimed it! Which is to say, that as the meek and gentle Savior he was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament -- oh, incomparably more atrocious than ever he was when he was at the very worst in those old days!

Twain, Mark. Letters From The Earth (pp. 63-64). Kindle Edition.

Mark Twain makes an excellent point. Makes a good support, given the absence of the concept of eternal torment in Hell in the Old Testament, for the concept of Annihilationism. Mark Twain's point probably can be argued to apply to Annihilationism as well as Annihilationism is eternal death, rather than eternal torment, by afterlife flame.

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.

Sorry for the (very) late response. Holiday jingles juggled with crafting the conclusion of the afterlife argument.

No problem.

Most hold the view that there is a 'real world that exists independently of us, independently of our experiences' etc. that contains "real world" analogs of the content of visual perception. What takes conscious effort is imagining what "real world" chairs, for example, might be like, as they are chairs in the absence of a person's perception of them or in the absence of any and all consciousness altogether. A person's perception of a chair disappears when the person shifts attention, falls unconscious, or dies while a "real world" chair does not disappear or wink out of existence in response to this sudden and unexpected loss of self and consciousness.

If "real world" chairs do not wink out of existence in response to sudden loss of perception of chairs, "real world" chairs and perceived chairs are not one and the same thing. They are different existences. "Real world" chairs, therefore, are not made of subjective experience, as in the common view of consciousness and how consciousness comes to exist, consciousness did not exist before there were brains, can only exist when produced by brains, and cease to exist upon loss of function of the brain.

"Real world" analogs of the content of visual perception, meanwhile, are not created by brains and thus continue to existence when "perception" of these objects, which are created by brains and require brains in order to exist, wink out of existence (for those believing consciousness can cease to exist, that is) in response to dysfunction or cessation of function of the brain. But the only thing that we see and can see, is the thing created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). We cannot see "real world" chairs or analogs of the content of visual perception because these are not created by the brain. Like God for the religious person, and as Kant observed, the existence of "real world" objects that are the foundations, causes, and analogs of the objects seen in consciousness is supported only by faith. Why? Because we can only see and experience our consciousness. The thing that supposedly winks out of existence when the brain stops functioning. We cannot see or experience things that are not our consciousness. Thus we have no evidence of their existence.

I disagree with your last point. The phenomena of experience are evidence of the real world. Perhaps you deny it because you cannot accept the evil and suffering in the world.

The same argument against God in terms of the connection between God and our perception, it turns out, also applies to external world objects believed to be the analogs of the content of our visual perception.

When there isn't substantial correspondence between the subject's phenomenal experience and the external reality, the subject becomes dangerous to himself and/or others. We say that he is out of contact with reality. Correspondence between perception and the external world has survival value. Even metaphysical idealists like yourselves treat the perceptual like it's real. The ones who don't win the dubious Darwin's Awards. That is they contribute to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or by their own actions.

If one thinks good to simply remove the existence of "real world" analogs of the content of visual perception, why, that leaves our subjective experience as the only thing that is truly real.

That's seems to be what you have done. Do you think it "good" because you can thereby deny the reality of the evil and thereby "prove" the existence of a Good God and defeat the problem of evil? You achieve this at the price of denying the validity of perception. And you can marshal perceptual mistakes, optical illusions and to support of this denial. Do you perhaps do this because you have already denied that we are fallible human primates who's perceptual apparatus was designed by evolution to adapt and survive?

If subjective experience is the only thing that is real, the world we perceive must be and can only be a virtual or artificial reality composed only of our subjective experience. Empirically, as in, "hands on" observation of reality, this hypothesis is readily evident because it's right in front of our eyes every second we're awake. Unconscious matter or "real world" things that are not our consciousness or that are imagined to be things that can exist in the absence of all consciousness we have no evidence for (as all we can experience is our consciousness) and may not exist.

To assert that only subjective experience is real is to deny the neuroscience of perception. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system. You are denying the existence of physical or chemical stimulation. To you it's a "virtually" supplied by God.

To the neuroscientist, vision involves light striking the retina of the eye, smell is mediated by odor molecules, and hearing involves pressure waves. To you light, molecules, and pressure waves are all illusions performed by God. From your theory it seems to follow that science is merely part of a grand illusion perpetrated by God.

Evolution of consciousness re: subjective experience or the fact or act of subjectively experiencing arising from unconscious matter is only a "possibility" only if that which is not subjective experience or is not the fact or act of subjectively experience either:1. Stops being something that is not subjective experience to magically transform into subjective experience or2. Magically conjures subjective experience from previous non-existence of subjective experience

Again your use of the adverb "magically" is unwarranted. Consciousness via natural selection may have evolved like other human capacities.

Let's really think about this: -Unconscious matter is not simply matter that is not conscious, but matter that is not consciousness. -Unconscious matter is believed to become consciousness or consciousness is believed to "arise from" or originate from unconscious matter. But: 1. Unconscious matter is not the fact or act of experiencing or someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone. 2. But it is commonly believed that one day, after an eternity of not being someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone, unconscious matter contorts itself into a brain that either conjures someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone from non-existence, or parts of the brain, which is made up of something that is not someone experiencing or that which someone experiences magically stops being something that is not someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone to become someone experiencing and that which is experience by someone.

Your logic is unnecessarily tortured. You presuppose what you're trying to prove. Even amoebas which have no nervous system react to stimuli. Sensation apparently evolved from that capacity of organic matter and consciousness from that.

It is just becomes subjective experience. How does it get from not being subjective experience to being subjective experience? You’re response to this is: “We can’t explain it, but trust me, it happens. You're supposed to believe that this is irrefutably reality, this is the way things are.”To me this insistence upon unconscious matter and it's magical, yes, probably impossible relation to experiencing ultimately stems from disbelief that subjective experience is probably eternal. It certainly does not come from and can have no support from experiment, as experiment requires and is materially composed of subjective experience and the only thing we can experience is subjective experience. Unconscious matter is something that is not subjective experience: we cannot experience something that is not our subjective experience.

Not so. What we are experiencing as subjects is material. The fact that I can give a causal account of how it comes about that I see the tree (light photons strike my retina and set up a series of neuron firings that eventually cause a visual experience) does not show that I don’t see a tree. There is no inconsistency between asserting, on the one hand, “I directly perceive the tree,” and asserting, on the other, “There is a sequence of physical and neurobiological events that eventually produce in me the experience I describe as ‘seeing the tree.’” Whereas, to maintain that there is no external reality corresponding to my subjective experience the scientific explanation is an illusion. I guess that's why you had to come up with your hypothetical subjective elements. Contrary to your claim that there is no experimental evidence for the external objective world, the entire body of knowledge gained by the physical sciences is that evidence. Your subjective "science" is paltry by comparison.

Why not believe that subjective experience is eternal? We accept that physical energy is eternal without question, when we can't even know physical energy even exists because the only existence we have evidence of is our consciousness.

Infinite regression. My experience requires me as the experiencer. I didn't create myself. All observable experiencers are born not eternal. So in hypothesizing eternal subjective experience, you are postulating something that cannot be experienced or known. Agnosticism is the correct epistemological response to this proposition.

At the end of the day, we're talking brute transformation of something into something it is not, simply because one does not wish to believe in the eternal existence of something, but wishes to believe in the eternal existence of something the something one does not want to believe is eternal is not (whew).

It's not a question of "wishing to believe" or not. The issue is epistemological. There's no way to verify or falsify the proposition [if indeed it is even coherent].

Now that---positing that eternal unconscious matter inexplicably becomes someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone---requires more of an infinite leap than just stating that consciousness has always existed. After all, existence only appears or manifests in the form of someone and the which someone experiences. It does not appear in any other manner. Why jump to something that is not someone and that which someone experiences to explain the existence of someone and that which someone experiences?Why do we need the opposite of consciousness to explain consciousness? the views we hold prereflectively so that any departure from them requires a conscious effort and a convincing argument. Why is unconscious matter even necessary, save only because one does not believe in eternal consciousness?

Because this is the view that we hold prereflectively and this is the view supported by the physical sciences which are supported by evidence.

Unconscious matter is simply an idea created by consciousness with the intelligence to imagine something other than itself. But the only thing it can experience is itself. Consciousness cannot rid itself of itself. And can only use itself to try to imagine something that is not itself, an impossible feat. In service to Occam's Razor, it is far simpler to posit that consciousness is eternal than to try to conjure it from something it is not.

Everything should be explained as simply as it can be, but not simpler. Eternal consciousness is too simple to account for observable facts. We observe that consciousness is embodied in finite physical beings including ourselves. Consciousness cannot be observed floating around. Eternal consciousness is not observable.

Touche. A mea culpa is in order. I do have anxiety about death and it admittedly does motivate my argument for an afterlife, but the anxiety is not the sole motivation. The logical possibility of the afterlife, given the existence and possibilities inherent within consciousness or the notion of consciousness also drive the argument. If one can posit "real world" analogs of the content of visual perception that existed before or consists of a substance that is not consciousness, with these analogs unable to appear within consciousness because they are not consciousness, one can posit the afterlife and God. In fact, it is far simpler for the latter than the former to logically exist, as the latter consists of consciousness and is not something that is not consciousness. That being said, the real existence of the afterlife, if it is a reality, is a reality regardless of my anxiety about death. The strength of my argument for an afterlife ultimately lies in the conceptual fact that anxiety about death does not nor cannot in itself falsify the existence of the afterlife if the afterlife objectively exists.

Right. I would say that, based on physical science, an afterlife is highly unlikely since subjectivity is the ability of a living biological organism.

As before, my existential anxiety does not by it's presence falsify nor indicate the falsity of the Bible in regard to its metaphysical assertions regarding the afterlife or the existence of God and persons in the external world. In the end, it does not matter if I have existential anxiety about death or worry if indeed it is eternal cessation of consciousness: the anxiety does not by its presence indicate or reveal the non-existence of God or the afterlife. But we can't know that death (in terms of eternal and irreversible loss of self or consciousness) happens or is the actual fact of things.Mark Twain makes an excellent point. Makes a good support, given the absence of the concept of eternal torment in Hell in the Old Testament, for the concept of Annihilationism. Mark Twain's point probably can be argued to apply to Annihilationism as well as Annihilationism is eternal death, rather than eternal torment, by afterlife flame.

Twain was satirizing the New Testament where it is shown that, ironically, Jesus was the first to preach the hell that he supposedly saves us from. Every generation since his alleged resurrection has demonstrated that he did not save us from physical death which goes on as it did before him.

I maintain that a perfectly good God, if such exists, would not relegate billions of his creatures to eternal punishment. Jesus, if he was a man motivated by compassion, would not have consigned people to that fate. So, eternal hell may have been the invention of the New Testament Christian writers.

"Real world" analogs of the content of visual perception, meanwhile, are not created by brains and thus continue to existence when "perception" of these objects, which are created by brains and require brains in order to exist, wink out of existence (for those believing consciousness can cease to exist, that is) in response to dysfunction or cessation of function of the brain. But the only thing that we see and can see, is the thing created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). We cannot see "real world" chairs or analogs of the content of visual perception because these are not created by the brain. Like God for the religious person, and as Kant observed, the existence of "real world" objects that are the foundations, causes, and analogs of the objects seen in consciousness is supported only by faith.Why? Because we can only see and experience our consciousness. The thing that supposedly winks out of existence when the brain stops functioning. We cannot see or experience things that are not our consciousness. Thus we have no evidence of their existence.

I disagree with your last point. The phenomena of experience are evidence of the real world.

The phenomena of experience, in godless mythology, do not exist or appear unless there is a neural circuit in the brain that, by random chance, has the ability to create and produce a particular phenomenon of experience. The “real world” or “real things”, by contrast, are not created by brains and themselves do not create the phenomena of experience (well, the only thing that does is the “real object” version of the brain).

Thus:

1. We cannot experience the “real world” or “real world” objects as these are not created or produced by the brain. A "real world" tree, for example, does not come from the brain, as the tree would rip the brain and skull apart and crush the body as it emerged from neurons trapped in a skull. The only thing we can experience is the ephemeral, intangible visible experience of a tree produced by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

2. One observes the existence of personal subjective experience of a chair, train, mountain, park, etc., then fancifully imagines or makes up (one must do so, as one cannot experience external “real” objects or worlds) the concept of chairs, trains, mountains, parks, etc. that are not produced by one’s brain, that is imagined to exist outside one’s consciousness and as it is not created by one's brain, would survive and is unaffected by the loss of one’s consciousness.

3. One then proceeds from the act of making up the concept of “real world” chairs, trains, mountains, etc., to believing that brain-produced subjective experience of chairs, trains, mountains, etc. are evidence of “real world” chairs, trains, mountains, etc. But they are not one and the same thing, as “real world” chairs, trains, etc. are not created by the brain and have nothing to do with the creation and appearance of experienced chairs, trains, etc.

4. One therefore imagines things that cannot be experienced as they are conceived to exist (as things not created by the brain: we can only experience that which “comes from” or is produced by the brain) and state that a real entity (a person’s experience of an object) is evidence of something one cannot experience but has entirely made up in the mind (make no mistake: we do not experience external objects and events, but do nothing but imagine them and believe in their existence).---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps you deny it because you cannot accept the evil and suffering in the world.

Of course I accept the evil and suffering in the world, you have to accept it every time you turn on the news. I do not believe in the existence of external objects and events that are doppelgangers (to whatever imagined level or extent) of the content of visual perception. This denial does not equate to a denial of the existence of evil. The evil and suffering in the world are just aspects of the virtual or artificial reality that is human consciousness.

When there isn't substantial correspondence between the subject's phenomenal experience and the external reality, the subject becomes dangerous to himself and/or others.

How can one know whether or not there is substantial correspondence between the subject’s phenomenal experience and the external reality, when we have no experienced evidence of the external reality, because the external reality is something other than our experience as our experience is created by the brain and the external reality is not?

(For those believing the brain creates consciousness)

We say that he is out of contact with reality.

If he experiences, he is not out of contact with reality, because the only reality for which we have evidence is our subjective experience. We do not have evidence of the existence of anything that is not one’s subjective experience. We only have the idea of something that is not and that is outside one’s subjective experiences and we then go on to imagine that these imaginary things have creative or active input and connections and relations to subjective experience. All the while, the idea of external objects and events is just another creation of the brain, another aspect of subjective experience (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Correspondence between perception and the external world has survival value.

As the brain does not create external objects in the external world and we have no evidence of their existence (as they are not created by the brain and therefore cannot be experienced), there is no evidence of any correspondence between perception and the external world. There is only evidence of perception of something created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). Acts of successful thinking and action resulting in survival, therefore, and survival instinct is all created by the brain and is just a part of a brain-created artificial or virtual reality that exists in the absence of external objects or events. (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). This goes into the following:

Even metaphysical idealists like yourselves treat the perceptual like it's real.

Of course they do, because that is the way their brains cause them to think, believe, and act (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). External objects have nothing to do with the existence and abilities of the neural circuits said to give rise to phenomenal experience of things believed to be experience of external objects. We have no evidence that external objects exist and if they did, they have nothing to do with:

1. The existence of the neural circuit that by the luckiest chance, happened to be the very neural circuit that happens to reside in the brain and that happens to be able to, out of all the things the neural circuit could have had the ability to do, create a subjective experience of that external object or event that happens to act upon the body at just the current moment. What convenience this neural circuit happened be available at that moment in the brain!

The external object or event had no hand in creating the neural circuit that luckily represents it as it could not physically act upon the neural circuit to ensure the circuit produces only its image and nothing else without shattering the skull, imploding the brain, and perhaps crushing the body in the attempt.

A real world SUV, for example, cannot reach with its metal and plastic through a skull to make sure a subjectively perceived imagine of itself will one day emerge without destroying the skull, brain, and crushing the body containing the skull and brain.

The SUV or any real world object outside the skull and body has nothing to do, therefore, with providing the brain with the neural circuit that produces visual perception of the real world object or grants the neural circuit with the ability to produce visual perception of real world objects (for those believing neurons produce visual perceptions of real world objects). Neural circuits of the occipital lobe and their ability to produce visual perception of external objects, therefore, exist for reasons that have nothing to do with the existence of the real world objects they purportedly represent.

The ones who don't win the dubious Darwin's Awards. That is they contribute to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or by their own actions.

Their actions in this regard are just part of the artificial conscious reality created by their brain, not any action by or reaction to external objects, as we have no evidence of the existence of external objects. One only imagines the concept of external objects and then comes to believe these imaginary entities exist and have something to do with the only real thing that has bothered to show up to the party of existence, subjective experience.

If one thinks good to simply remove the existence of "real world" analogs of the content of visual perception, why, that leaves our subjective experience as the only thing that is truly real.

That's seems to be what you have done. Do you think it "good" because you can thereby deny the reality of the evil and thereby "prove" the existence of a Good God and defeat the problem of evil? You achieve this at the price of denying the validity of perception. And you can marshal perceptual mistakes, optical illusions and to support of this denial. Do you perhaps do this because you have already denied that we are fallible human primates who's perceptual apparatus was designed by evolution to adapt and survive?

What does denying the existence of “real world” analogs of the content of visual perception have to do with denial of the reality of evil? Evil exists, and is part of the artificial or virtual reality that is our consciousness, even in the absence of “real world” objects and worlds behind the artificial reality.

Perception is “valid” only in the sense that it exists. Nothing more. It does not gain validity by an invisible something hiding behind it (in terms of an invisible, non-experiential copy of the object that is perceived). Perception cannot point to or indicate the existence of something behind it that is not and is something other than the perception itself. How can perception “see” something other than itself? In the mythology of the brain creating consciousness, you have:

(i) that which is created by the brain

(ii) that which is not created by the brain

If every instance of consciousness depends upon and cannot exist without some neural circuit in the brain, everything you experience and every reaction you have or do not have to what you experience is just a creation of the brain. That which is not created by the brain, therefore, has nothing to do with your experience as every experience is a product of the brain and things outside and are not created by the brain do not take part in the brain's creation of one's experience.

To assert that only subjective experience is real is to deny the neuroscience of perception. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system. You are denying the existence of physical or chemical stimulation. To you it's a "virtually" supplied by God.

To the neuroscientist, vision involves light striking the retina of the eye, smell is mediated by odor molecules, and hearing involves pressure waves. To you light, molecules, and pressure waves are all illusions performed by God. From your theory it seems to follow that science is merely part of a grand illusion perpetrated by God.

The neuroscience of perception or process of perception, if you truly wish to be honest about it, is a combination of experience and make-believe.

The end of the process of perception is a neural circuit in the brain producing a subjective experience of a particular visual image, the smell of a certain odor or combination of odors, the experience of a certain sound or combination of sounds, etc. This is the end of the assembly line of the process of perception, the “everlasting Gobstopper” that finally cranks out at the end of the Willy Wonka machine that is the link between the external world, objects and events in the external world, the peripheral and central nervous systems, the sensory organs, the brain, and that special neural circuit in the brain that by the luckiest chance just happens---can you believe it?---to have the ability to produce a sensory representation of that very external world object and/or event that just happens to affect your body and brain at the current moment.

What an awesome convenience, that the brain happened to have in it’s “magic bag o’ tricks” (pun intended) the neural circuit that just happens to be able to represent the external object and event that’s affecting the body "right now", and to have this neural circuit set up within the brain years prior (science surely doesn’t expect neural circuits that create subjective experiences of external objects and events to assimilate seconds before an experience in the nick of time, given the immediacy of new, incoming experience?) to the object coming to affect the body and produce the lucky pinball shooting of electrical signals from the external object and event to the peripheral nervous system and/or facial sensory organs to the neural circuit that happens to have the ability to produce subjective representation of the external object or event.

But according to godless mythology in regard to consciousness, subjective experience, only exists if there is a neural circuit in the brain that creates the experience, consciousness is not believed to be able to come into existence by itself, independent of the brain.

Thus every part of the process of perception except the “everlasting Gobstopper” of subjective experience cranking out at the end of the Willy Wonka machine of the process of perception is make-believe, as neurons create consciousness but do not create the things in the process of perception outside consciousness itself. The only evidence of things having existence is subjective experience of things that have existence, and subjective experience of things that have experience can only come from the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Ergo:

1. Light striking the retina of the eye is make-believe. We have no evidence of the existence of light that is not light that is visual perception of light created by the brain.

2. Odor molecules and pressure waves are make-believe. We have no evidence of the existence of atoms or molecules or pressure waves that are not creations of the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Light, molecules, and pressure waves not created by the brain probably do not exist, and if they do, they do not personally create sensory perception but merely send mind-independent signals that, in probably the best “pool shooting” in existence, happen to route to and though the animal body to electronically activate the already-existing neural circuit that luckily (before the fact) had the power to inscrutably produce sensory perception that just happens to be sensory representation of the thing that just happens to send the signal to the body at the current time (whew).

In light, however, of the logical possibility of things existing “just cuz” in the form of there being nothing in existence except non-embodied persons experiencing artificially real worlds created by God and another hidden aspect of existence, we don’t need external objects and events.

Your logic is unnecessarily tortured. You presuppose what you're trying to prove. Even amoebas which have no nervous system react to stimuli. Sensation apparently evolved from that capacity of organic matter and consciousness from that.

I think it may be the other way around. You presuppose what you imagine or make-believe, not what is actually experienced as real. We have no evidence of the existence of organic or unconscious matter. We only have evidence of the existence of persons and their subjective experience. Unconscious matter or the concept of unconscious matter, therefore, can only be an imaginary object conceived by and within the imagination and has no basis in reality, because we use experience to determine what is real, and we experience nothing but our experience (something must be our experience or composed of our experience in order to be experienced and thus revealed as reality).

Not so. What we are experiencing as subjects is material. The fact that I can give a causal account of how it comes about that I see the tree (light photons strike my retina and set up a series of neuron firings that eventually cause a visual experience) does not show that I don’t see a tree.

It would be odd to say that an account of the process of perception between the external world and the brain giving rise to visual experience of a tree does not result in one seeing a tree. One sees a tree, then gives an imaginary account of how the vision came to be, using imaginary objects and processes that have never been seen and therefore cannot be proven by experiment (as experimentation is composed of subjective experience).

There is no inconsistency between asserting, on the one hand, “I directly perceive the tree,” and asserting, on the other, “There is a sequence of physical and neurobiological events that eventually produce in me the experience I describe as ‘seeing the tree.’”

If one chooses to believe in the made-up “existence” of ‘physical and neurobiological events that eventually produce in me the experience I describe as ‘seeing the tree’, sure. But the aforementioned events that purportedly result in visual perception of a tree are imaginary, as we only have evidence of and can only experience “seeing a tree”.

Whereas, to maintain that there is no external reality corresponding to my subjective experience the scientific explanation is an illusion. I guess that's why you had to come up with your hypothetical subjective elements. Contrary to your claim that there is no experimental evidence for the external objective world, the entire body of knowledge gained by the physical sciences is that evidence. Your subjective "science" is paltry by comparison.

The entire body of knowledge gained by the physical sciences, if it is something other than that which was and is directly experienced by a person, is entirely imaginary, i.e. only a figment of the scientist’s imagination that the scientist believes has real, independent existence outside the scientist's consciousness--although the scientist cannot prove it by direct experience as the scientist maintains and admits it is something that is not the scientist’s subjective experience as it is something outside and that is not created by his, or anyone’s, brain. But if it is something that is not a person or a person’s experience, it cannot be experienced. If it cannot be experienced but can only be "shown" to others in the form of a concept in a person’s mind, it is obviously imaginary and only exists in the form of a fictional concept or state of affairs.

One makes the mistake of asserting (it’s okay to believe and state that it is merely what one believes) that that which is only imaginary is irrefutably real. We commonly make the mistake (aggravating as it is) of stating what one believes as if it were irrefutable fact. The only thing that is irrefutably real is subjective experience. Again, we only have evidence of the existence of subjective experience, i.e. the fact or act of experiencing and that which is experienced only during a particular act of experience. Everything else is make-believe, and may not exist.

Infinite regression. My experience requires me as the experiencer.

True.

I didn't create myself.

True, given that most of our experiences are unexpected and unwanted.

All observable experiencers are born not eternal.

Other experiencers are observable? One can only experience oneself. But under the belief (the belief that rescues one from overt solipsism) that other experiencers exist and are observed only to be humans, animals, and insects, this is true “on the surface”.

So in hypothesizing eternal subjective experience, you are postulating something that cannot be experienced or known.

Fancy that, the same can be said for external objects and events like atoms, light, and pressure waves, or anything not created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Agnosticism is the correct epistemological response to this proposition.

True, but I happen to believe in the existence of eternal persons. I have greater reason to believe in eternal persons than I do in things that are not and are not made out of subjective experience. Persons that are finite are finite by chance, as they exist “just so”. It is not out of the question that this same “just-so-ness” applies to eternal persons. There’s really no good reason for them not to exist except for…well...just plain ole’ disbelief in their existence. Other than pure and simple disbelief, there is no valid reason eternal persons do not nor cannot exist.

Now that---positing that eternal unconscious matter inexplicably becomes someone experiencing and that which is experienced by someone---requires more of an infinite leap than just stating that consciousness has always existed. After all, existence only appears or manifests in the form of someone and the which someone experiences. It does not appear in any other manner. Why jump to something that is not someone and that which someone experiences to explain the existence of someone and that which someone experiences?Why do we need the opposite of consciousness to explain consciousness? the views we hold prereflectively so that any departure from them requires a conscious effort and a convincing argument. Why is unconscious matter even necessary, save only because one does not believe in eternal consciousness?

Because this is the view that we hold prereflectively and this is the view supported by the physical sciences which are supported by evidence.

We only have evidence of one’s subjective experience. We do not have evidence of something that is not one’s subjective experience. Something must be or be made out of one’s subjective experience in order to be experienced. The physical sciences takes something that is real (subjective experience) and pair it with something that is purely make-believe (something that is not subjective experience). They believe that that which was purely made up in their minds is real on the basis that the imaginary entity mimics the appearance of visual perception, then go forth to preach the gospel that that which only appears in their minds is real and has something to do with that which is real (subjective experience), stating the fiction with such confidence and certainty that those who don’t know better believe they are stating irrefutable truth.

One guy remarked about the situation in an interesting way:

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.

-Romans 1:22

Everything should be explained as simply as it can be, but not simpler. Eternal consciousness is too simple to account for observable facts.

The only observable fact is that the only thing we observe and experience is one’s own subjective experience. Everything one experiences only appears when one subjectively and personally experiences it, and disappears when one no longer experiences it. Something (anything for that matter) requires one to experience it in order for it to be experienced, and must therefore (since it requires one to experience it in order to be experienced) materially consist of a substance called: “Your Experience Of It”.

We observe that consciousness is embodied in finite physical beings including ourselves.

We observe that consciousness is seemingly embodied in seemingly finite beings with bodies composed of their subjective experience of a body (the body is composed of "Your Experience Of It"). The body is not composed of something other than and that is not one's subjective experience of one's body.

Consciousness other than one’s own consciousness is not observable, yet we believe the consciousness of other people exist. One experiences oneself “in a body”, but the body is upon reflection made up of one’s subjective experience of it, as a central avatar of the artificial reality composed of one’s subjective experience. Thus consciousness “floats” in the sense of being fundamentally a first-person subjective experience that is essentially anterior to perception of a body.

We might say that we are software and not hardware; the psychological relations that are me are currently instantiated in this neocortex, but I am not essentially this neocortex nor even (more controversially) any neocortex.

-Max More, The Terminus of the Self

Twain was satirizing the New Testament where it is shown that, ironically, Jesus was the first to preach the hell that he supposedly saves us from. Every generation since his alleged resurrection has demonstrated that he did not save us from physical death which goes on as it did before him.

Christ not saving us from physical death is supported by the bible:

It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

-Hebrews 9:27

Jesus stating:

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

-John 11:25

Does not contradict Hebrews 9:27 as ‘yet shall he live’ follows rather than replaces the first death. It’s about God pulling a person from the current artificial reality of the world in which he or she perceives oneself in an animal body and is perceived by others as having been born an infant and evolving into an adult and senior person. It’s not God’s intent for man to remain in that artificial reality, thus, ‘physical death …goes on as it did before him’.

I maintain that a perfectly good God, if such exists, would not relegate billions of his creatures to eternal punishment. Jesus, if he was a man motivated by compassion, would not have consigned people to that fate. So, eternal hell may have been the invention of the New Testament Christian writers.

Many verses in the bible refer to man not being eternally tormented in hell, but (if Universalism as believed by Salisbury below is false) having consciousness eternally removed via fire of hell. I agree, a perfectly good God would not relegate anyone to eternal torment in hell (save perhaps Satan).

As far as eternal hell being the invention of New Testament writers:

There is no documentation that the church councils of the first four centuries embraced the doctrine of "eternal punishment." The church councils at Nice in A.D. 325, at Constantinople in A.D.381, at Ephesus in A.D.431 and at Chalcedon in A.D.451 never embraced this doctrine. In contrast, there is documented evidence that many church leaders and teachers of the first centuries A.D. wrote acclaiming the doctrine of "universal salvation" or "ultimate reconciliation", none of whom were censored. It was not until 553 A.D. that the Roman Catholic Church denounced the teaching of ultimate reconciliation as heresy.

-Salisbury, Lee: Eternal Punishment—Is It Really Of God?

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.

Your system seems to be an updating of George Berkeley's metaphysical idealism with a touch of quantum mechanics. I don't think Berkeley was ever so much refuted as ignored and forgotten as materialist science and technology moved on to bring us the modern high tech society that we live in today.

What is surprising is that there's more room for your way of thinking today because of scientific discoveries on the quantum and macro scales that defy common sense then there was in Berkeley's time when science was limited to Newton's physics which is verifiable in ways accessible to ordinary people.

Like you, Berkeley was motivated primarily by Christian apologetics. But, today it's obvious that the Christian God doesn't necessarily follow from metaphysical idealism. The Cosmic Perceiver can just as well be Vishnu or Odin or the Goddess or Lord Buddha or some new-age deity instead of the Christian God.

Still, I'm happy to see you supporting a universalist interpretation that doesn't find eternal perdition in the Bible. If that interpretation is true, the Biblical authors should have made the point clearer. Cuz, it's easy to miss as evidenced by the fact that it's the minority view among Christians who take the Bible seriously and preach it to the rest of the world.

Your system seems to be an updating of George Berkeley's metaphysical idealism with a touch of quantum mechanics. I don't think Berkeley was ever so much refuted as ignored and forgotten as materialist science and technology moved on to bring us the modern high tech society that we live in today.

What is surprising is that there's more room for your way of thinking today because of scientific discoveries on the quantum and macro scales that defy common sense then there was in Berkeley's time when science was limited to Newton's physics which is verifiable in ways accessible to ordinary people.

I am a disciple of Berkeley. I remain "sorta" a disciple of David J. Chalmers (Professor of Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona and Australia) as it is his "panprotopsychism" (the idea that, to explain how the brain creates consciousness, consciousness is not conjured from non-existence but exists in the form of particles of consciousness or "protophenomena" that reside in particles making up the brain and "jigsaw puzzle" into conscious experience in synchronized correspondence to neural function) that is the progenitor of the Psychoverse and the Thenanthrochism.

When I abandoned the existence of the physical I adhered more to Berkeley. To my surprise, in Chalmer's latest paper he admits an increasing attraction to Idealism, particularly "Cosmic Idealism" (wherein the Ultimate Perceiver is not God or any deity but the Universe). Seems my former teacher is reaching the same conclusion about existence in his own way.

Like you, Berkeley was motivated primarily by Christian apologetics. But, today it's obvious that the Christian God doesn't necessarily follow from metaphysical idealism. The Cosmic Perceiver can just as well be Vishnu or Odin or the Goddess or Lord Buddha or some new-age deity instead of the Christian God.

Very true. From our side of the fence it comes down to what one discovers over time one truly and deeply believes, despite the fact that "out there" it could be....

Still, I'm happy to see you supporting a universalist interpretation that doesn't find eternal perdition in the Bible. If that interpretation is true, the Biblical authors should have made the point clearer. Cuz, it's easy to miss as evidenced by the fact that it's the minority view among Christians who take the Bible seriously and preach it to the rest of the world.

That pesky English translation of the Bible, huh? I totally agree. The eternal torment doctrine is unfortunate, because it generates, in Christians, a very special fear of death of a magnitude not shared by any other religious or philosophical type on earth (though many Christians would vehemently deny it). According to certain sources eternal torment in hellfire began either with Augustine (Peoples, Glenn: History of Hell-Hell Before Augustine) or the Catholic Church in 553 A.D (Salisbury, Lee: Eternal Punishment-Is It Really Of God?), with the first four centuries of the Christian church teaching either Universalism, in which everyone (including Satan in some versions) attains Heaven due to God's mercy and understanding of man's helplessness in possessing the sinful nature and as such eventually cures everyone of it--or Annihilationism, in which there are people who can't be saved but are not eternally tormented in flame but destroyed by fire (leading to an "atheistic death" of eternal and irrevocable cessation of consciousness ironically imposed by an existing God).

I hope Universalism is the way of things, but in observance of the evil and incorrigibility of certain people in the world, I find myself leaning naturally toward Annihilationism. I just can't see, short of a brute God-imposed universal lobotomy "no matter what", how certain people based on how they are and unapologetically choose to be could achieve eternal life and absence of evil.

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.

Thanks for the detailed reply. From your responses, it seems to me that you don't hold your views dogmatically, but rather as possibilities which seem probable to you as a result of study and thought. I think that's good.

I can entertain your views as possible in theory, but they are not where I live phenomenologically. Indeed Berkeley's starting point in phenomenal experience I buy completely since that IS where I live. But, when he posits God as the perceiver who's perception accounts for everything I am not conscious of at the moment, he begs the question. The move is simpler than when Descartes did it, so Berkeley can appeal to simplicity. But, it's simpler as well when God is eliminated from the equation instead of the physical world. And that's the one that seems to be present to my senses and the one supported by the massive evidence of the sciences. So, empirically, God loses billions of miles.

Be that as it may, are there any practical advantages to holding the immaterialist view that you do? Have you gotten to the point that it no longer seems to you like you are living in the physical world? If so, what is that like? How is it better, if, in deed it is?

My take on that is that certain kinds of animist, non-material outlooks allow for a more caring relation in all directions. One is immersed in life and consciousness, rather than a bag of chemicals, clanging its way through a albeit complicated, but mere, Newtonian universe where most things are unalive. One is always relating to life, affecting others, even when 'alone'. It also allows for more change, or potential change. Let's say Sheldrake is right that there are not laws but habits. Well, if we think in physicalist terms, things can't change that much. But in idealism, things could change more and faster - if we can get deep enough in the emotions and thoughts creating the architecture of the world.

And last one thing I experience as better is that it fits my reality more.

But then I'm an animist, so of course it would. And a pantheist, so of course it would. It all radiates life to me, though some of that life, like say in a plastic container, is so squashed down and twisted it barely has a mood or presence. But, still, even there, I feel a kind of pity for that twisted down not matter.

Be that as it may, are there any practical advantages to holding the immaterialist view that you do? Have you gotten to the point that it no longer seems to you like you are living in the physical world? If so, what is that like? How is it better, if, in deed it is?

Actually becoming and being an immaterialist opened my eyes to what might actually be the true nature of existence. It’s not a matter of "seeming as though one is no longer living in the physical world", but realizing that one lives in a world, but the world upon honest observation depends upon and actually consists of one's experience of it as opposed to consisting of something that is not one's experience of it. Immaterialism looks at existence as it actually presents itself.

Everyone starts off, I think, as a Naive Realist. But if one is lucky enough to have the metaphorical detective magnifying glass placed in one's hand and told to look hard at one's existence, this combined with the good fortune to have learned of the belief that the brain creates consciousness and the Process of Perception, Immaterialism falls into place when one performs the logic.

The materialist position: belief in unconscious matter, belief that consciousness somehow comes from and depends upon unconscious matter, and that outside the body and skull of conscious beings there is an unconscious world containing unconscious, non-living doppelgangers of the content of visual perception is the cornerstone of godless science and philosophy. When one looks hard at this belief “at the right angle”, one finds it is akin to the “D.A’s case” in this pivotal scene in the comedy-drama My Cousin Vinny:

The materialist's case "is an illusion, a magic trick" because....existence only shows up in the form of a person and that which the person experiences, and anything that is not a person or the experience of a person only shows up in the form of something imagined and believed by a person. Mind-independent objects and events are things that are not persons and as one discovers when observing the fiction of the Process of Perception, do not themselves create persons and their experiences and as such, save for the fiction of their signalling the brain due to its ability to create consciousness, are not needed to form persons or experience of persons.

The materialist position is therefore—like the “brick” in the movie example—“as thin as this playing card”.____________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Note: The terms “you”, "your", and "yourself",as it appears throughout the remainder of this reply is purely rhetorical, as "you" is “a rhetorical person representing someone critically analyzing belief that brains create consciousness, the idea of mind-independent objects and events, and the idea that mind-independent substance is somehow capable of creating subjective experience.”]_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

As a Naive Realist, Direct Realist, Indirect Realist, or Materialist, when one visually experiences things, one's mind informs one (in the form of intuition followed by belief) that one's visual perception is of something (Indirect Realism and Materialism) or is something (Naive and Direct Realism) other than oneself.

Descartes…wrote a response to skepticism about the existence of the external world. He argues that sensory perceptions come to him involuntarily, and are not willed by him. They are external to his senses, and according to Descartes, this is evidence of the existence of something outside of his mind, and thus, an external world. Descartes goes on to show that the things in the external world are material by arguing that God would not deceive him as to the ideas that are being transmitted, and that God has given him the "propensity" to believe that such ideas are caused by material things.

-Wikipedia: Rene Descartes

But sensory perceptions, despite the fact they come to one involuntarily and are often unexpected and unwanted is subjective experience, and consists or is made up of subjective experience. In order to experience anything, or to know that something exists, something must actively appear to present itself before oneself having the substance of your experience of it. If something is not made up of the substance of “your experience of it”, you can’t experience it.

In terms of “your experience of it” and that which supposedly exists when you’re asleep and not having experiences (if dreamless sleep exists) existence may be divided into:

1. Your experience of something

2. Whatever there is when you’re not experiencing something and everything you do not experience.

Once so divided, one can pick up the playing card of the brain--its ability to create consciousness thought to be a brick (using the "My Cousin Vinny" metaphor) and explained as though it were a brick.________________________________________________________________________

People balk at my statement that human sensory perception is essentially an artificial reality that is something completely different from and that is not the world in the absence of one’s consciousness, but this is true regardless of whether or not you believe the brain creates conscious experience when in absence of Immaterialism you believe that brain's create consciousness.

How?

Well, your experience of the world (or “a world”) is believed to come from your brain. Nothing else in the universe creates your experience of the world (or “a world”), as it is believed that consciousness—subjective experience—does not exist unless it is create and generated by a brain and did not exist before there were brains.

Thus for those believing the brain creates consciousness, the only thing holding up or supporting experience of the world (or “a world”) is the brain. That’s it. Nothing else creates your consciousness. In the absence of gods, nothing knows you exist, as everything is non-conscious and as such cannot care that you exist or have any concern or plan for your survival. Nothing knows you’re here in a godless world except what’s produced by the brain of another person, if that brain has a neural circuit that can visually perceive your body and movement and produce the experience of hearing your voice and sustaining the idea that you are individually conscious.

Everything on our side of the existence-fence, then, depends upon lucky chance that the brain just happens to possess a neural circuit capable of producing the experience of that which one actually comes to experience. If there isn’t a neural circuit in your brain capable (before the fact, no less) of producing experience x, you can’t experience x.

Doesn’t matter if x exists in the external world in a form that is not your experience of x (as the x that exists in the external world is not created by your brain and isn’t affected in the least by the function or cessation of function of your brain), all that matters is your experience of x, and you have to be lucky enough that your brain just happened to have a neural circuit capable of producing experience x prior to your brain’s production of experience x.

(Note: That's if your brain produces x. While your brain has the ability to produce x it may not have the opportunity to do so: think of someone who has the neurology to experience Japan and everything they would have seen and done in Japan, but never goes to Japan).

Given this, everything we think and believe about the world, including the idea that there are things that are not you that existed before you were conscious, while you temporarily are not conscious, and after you are no longer conscious comes from your brain. And get this: they only show up in the form of your idea of them, in the form of thoughts about them. They don’t appear in any other form, and they cannot show up as they really are (as they are believed to be): things you do not or cannot experience because they are not your experience, as everything that shows itself to you must appear in the form of and be made out of your experience of them.

Mind-independent objects and events are not created by your brain (as they are believed to exist outside your skull), thus you cannot experience them.

So when you do the detective work to figure out what’s happening, what’s really going on, you have to be careful not to delude yourself into thinking that things that are not you and what you experience, things not created by your brain, are one and the same as you and what you experience, which are created by your brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Given that things outside your skull and body, if they exist, cannot be one and the same as the conscious experience created by the 3-lb. blob of flesh inside your skull, it follows that your brain creates a virtual or artificial reality of a world that exists and appears as your experience of a world. Easy peasy. If you experience something, that something must something created by your brain and is thus part of the artificial reality created by your brain. Every object, environment, and body and behavior of every person you experience, if the brain creates consciousness and conscious experience can only exist if it is created by the physical brain, comes out of you, as they are part of the world that comes out of you, that is, your brain, as your brain is within your body (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

The world you experience then, is actually a projected “movie” that comes out of the “movie projector” of your brain, that is inside you. Every object, person, and event you experience comes from inside you, if consciousness comes from the brain.

All science, every scientific fact of biology, geology, physics, and so on and your beliefs regarding them are part of an artificial reality composed of your experience of them comes from inside your body, from your brain.

While the artificial reality part is true, the idea that brains create consciousness makes absolutely no sense. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Long story short, once you realize there is no logical relation between non-subjective experience to subjective experience, and you realize there is no logic to the idea of brains not made of subjective experience producing from itself something it is not (subjective experience), and you realize that the world and every object, environment, and bodies and behaviors of persons within it actually comes from you and are made out of you (your subjective experience of them, without which the objects, environments, and bodies and behaviors of persons would not appear), and given that any external, “you-independent” analogs or doppelgangers of these objects, environments, and bodies of persons if they exist do not themselves create your experience of them (as they are imagined to exist outside your skull and cannot directly reach the brain or themselves form conscious experience independent of brains), you can logically remove the physical world to be left only with the existence of persons and the artificial realities or worlds that they experience, that come from them and are made of them.

An immaterialist, therefore, basically observes an actual fact of existence (the idea that worlds, as they appear within actual existence, are experienced worlds made up of the substance of the person experiencing them), realizes that anything outside this fact exists only in the form of an imaginary idea that must be accepted on faith (Kant), and observing that the latter can logically have nothing to do with the existence of the former abandons the latter, leaving behind non-embodied minds experiencing artificial realities believed to have the same content (though perceived from different perspectives) in other non-embodied minds (giving rise to the idea of consensus reality).

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.

Thank you for your lengthy reply. Unfortunately you really didn't answer my question. Rather you restated how you arrived at you're metaphysical position. My question was whether in the end there are any practical advantages to holding such a system versus other metaphysical ones. Does it make you happier? And if so why? Is there some advantage to the immaterial world you claim to live in or to the other immaterial persons that you imagine occupy it?

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:Reply to felix dakat:Everyone starts off, I think, as a Naive Realist.

I am not sure that's true. On the one hand, babies are more like solipsists and what is out of view is not and there are unclear boundaries between self and other. But coming at it another way, I think you have to train naive realism. To some extent I would guess there will be aspects of naive realism in people, independent of culture. But we tend to view things in binary terms - a Western training result - and one can be a realist part of the time and an idealist other parts of the time. I think culture, that is training has a lot to do with being naive realists.

felix dakat wrote: My question was whether in the end there are any practical advantages to holding such a system versus other metaphysical ones.

I'll keep answering because it is good to think about, obviously for myself and not PG. Yes. if everything is a part of life/mind/spirit and you react to it that way, it leads to a more intimate relation. In Buber's terms I/you, certainly, rather than I/it, and then perhaps I/thou. What practical difference does this make? Well, first off, I think, in my case, it allows for intimacy even when other people are not present. You are 'in the woods' but you are not alone. Or at least, you are not alone in the sense of a physicalist who sees trees as chemical machines with no conscousness. He or she will not be feeling responses and presence. While this is palpable, it might not pass muster for some as a practical result. An artisan may come close, in his or her realtion to what gets called physical materials, the kinds of I/you relationship involving in co-making something with the wood, for example. It is a dialogue, a collaboration. It is intimate. The more you consider everything alive, the more likely you will have an artisan or artistic relation with what a physicalist will call materials. In experiential terms, it is a wildly different process. In end results, I think the care and affection will even be noticable by others.

Does it make you happier?

I think so, yes. Though how to measure such things...Modern physicalism presents us as something akin to 'sentient strangers in a universe that does not give a shit about us, is mostly dead, and where any sense of meaning will be grounded out of existence as if it never existed. It treats conscousness as an epiphenomenon or as a impotent witness or an illusion. It presents perception as a series of steps: object there, light bounces off, enters the retina, is interpreted and so on down the line. Even you closest loved one is sending telegraph messages through mud...you are not in contact with them. Being immersed in life and not separate from it, where life/consciousness is everywhere is a completely different life. And I think a more pleasant one.

Now most modern physicalists do not look over at their spouses at the dinner table and think of them as bags of chemical machines. They let themselves get lost in the illusions. But their world is improverished and deader. I know, I know what that outlook feels like. You also to work hard to keep up the illusoin of physicalism in your mind, constantly denying the immersion. Its a metaphysics that requires work to maintain and that's also a drain.

I think one other advantage is you don't need to replace and control nature as much as the physicalists feel desperate to do. You don't see nature as modular machines that should always be improved - via genetic engineering or whatever - or yourself as a faulty machine.

Metaphors lead to action. They also lead to emotional states and attitudes.

The modern physicalist, to the extent he or she is one, is a bringer of death in life.

Thank you for your lengthy reply. Unfortunately you really didn't answer my question. Rather you restated how you arrived at you're metaphysical position.

I'm so enamoured of my position I wander away to caress and whisper sweet nothings to it. Thanks for snapping me out of it.

My question was whether in the end there are any practical advantages to holding such a system versus other metaphysical ones.

Immaterialism has the same practical advantages as any other system, because sensory experience and the rules of nature seen by the materialist are also observed by the Immaterialist. Everything in terms of the rules of survival, economics, science, etc. works and behaves the same way because its the same sensory experience in a consensus reality between conscious beings experiencing "this" artificial reality. There are no practical advantages in one that do not exist in the other because everyone is seeing, hearing, etc. the same thing.

Does it make you happier?

Yes.

And if so why?

I'm proud of Immaterialism's invincibility. That makes me happy. I feel it's the actual truth of things after doing the detective work to discover the logical tenuousness of materialism (in light of the trap it sets for itself in the connection between belief that brains create consciousness, the process of perception, and the existence of mind-independent events and doppelgangers of the content of visual perception not composed of subjective experience). Immaterialism, meanwhile, aids theology and lends greater logical support for the existence of God. If the external world contains minds rather than material objects and events, God (given that only minds exist) can easily be one of those persons. That makes me happy.

Is there some advantage to the immaterial world you claim to live in or to the other immaterial persons that you imagine occupy it?

The only advantage I can think of is an interesting, adventurous relation between minds in the external world and the personally experienced consciousness (the battle between good and evil, the journey to eternal life, etc.). Beyond that, there's no advantage the immaterial world possesses (in terms of sensory perception and how it appears and behaves) over the material world. Both appear and behave the same and follow the same experiential rules.

Now most modern physicalists do not look over at their spouses at the dinner table and think of them as bags of chemical machines. They let themselves get lost in the illusions. But their world is improverished and deader. I know, I know what that outlook feels like. You also to work hard to keep up the illusoin of physicalism in your mind, constantly denying the immersion. Its a metaphysics that requires work to maintain and that's also a drain.

Well put.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:Reply to felix dakat:Everyone starts off, I think, as a Naive Realist.

I am not sure that's true. On the one hand, babies are more like solipsists and what is out of view is not and there are unclear boundaries between self and other. But coming at it another way, I think you have to train naive realism. To some extent I would guess there will be aspects of naive realism in people, independent of culture. But we tend to view things in binary terms - a Western training result - and one can be a realist part of the time and an idealist other parts of the time. I think culture, that is training has a lot to do with being naive realists.

Well Naive Realism is the belief that what you perceive is the actual world. Most people think, for example, that when they see a tree, they are seeing the tree as it exists in the external world, and that this perception and the external world are one. But this doesn't account for the schism that occurs when the person stops looking up the tree or should suddenly fall asleep in front of the tree. The person is no longer seeing the tree. The schism reveals the truer case that one's sight or perception of the tree is something different and that is not the tree (if it exists) as it is when you or no one in existence is observing it (or a mental copy of it, given the fact that experienced trees disappear when one stops looking or falls asleep).

So Naive Realism graduates based on the existence of inattention or sleep (or death) into Indirect Realism, Direct Realism (which to me is indistinguishable from Naive Realism but go figure), Idealism, and Materialism. These all (or should) admit that perception of the tree is not one and the same thing as the tree in the absence of anyone's perception of it, for, if the tree was one and the same as anyone's perception of it, the tree would necessarily cease to exist when you stopped looking at it and fell asleep, and would return to existence when you began to look at it again. If the tree continues to exist and is unaffected by whether or not you are looking at it or conscious, the tree that remains is not your perception of a tree and must be something that does not depend upon and exists entirely independent of your perception.

However, the person-independent or consciousness-independent tree is entirely make-believe, as it only appears within actual existence as an imaginary idea of something that might exist outside consciousness. In actuality, one finds we don't need mind-independent trees in order to have perception of trees, because mind-independent trees are not one and the same as perceived trees and do not themselves create perception of trees. Only the brain does that if one believes the brain creates consciousness, or existence exists in the conscious form of a person and that person's perception of a tree or Someone (or Someones?) somehow places perception of a tree into a subordinate consciousness at a particular moment, if one does not believe brains create consciousness (but are a deliberately illogical symbol of what truly creates consciousness).

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.

Almost everyone agrees that there will be very strong correlations between what's in the brain and consciousness, ... The question is what kind of explanation that will give you. We want more than correlation, we want explanation -- how and why do brain process give rise to consciousness? That's the big mystery.

David Chalmers

So, sure, it's always possible that one or another rendition of the "afterlife" can yanked out of that. But only until we are able to move beyond largely autodidactic arguments and into more substantive discussion will the exchanges become more than just basically "worlds of words".

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

iambiguous wrote:Almost everyone agrees that there will be very strong correlations between what's in the brain and consciousness, ... The question is what kind of explanation that will give you. We want more than correlation, we want explanation -- how and why do brain process give rise to consciousness? That's the big mystery.

David Chalmers

It's truly sad how much bias is in the brain is the seat of consciousness period position. At the very least how few seem (SORRY CAPS LOCK IS LOCKED) TO CONSIDER THE BIAS INVOLVED IN THIS.

CAN WE MEASURE CONSCIOUSNESS? nO. wE CAN HOWEVER MEASURE RESPONSES AND FUNCTIONS. MOVEMENT, MEMORY, REACTION...BUT THESE THINGS ARE NOT CONSCIOUSNESS, THEY HAPPEN WITHIN CONSCIOUSNESS. sO WE JUDGE THINGS THAT REACT, REMEMBER, BEHAVE LIKE US AS HAVING CONSCIOUSNESS. wITHOUT KNOWING HOW IT ARISES OR EVEN IF IT ISN'T EVERYWHERE.

eVERYONE WANTS OTHER PEOPLE TO HAVE THE ONUS. tHE CURRENT AXIOM IS, CONSCOUSNESS IS THE EXCEPTION AND ONLY CREATURES LIKE US MIGHT HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS. sO IF YOU DISAGREE, YOU BEAR THE ONUS, EVEN THOUGH THE PEOPLE HOLDING THAT POSITION HAVE NO THE SLIGHTEST EVIDENCE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS RESTRICTED TO BRAINS OR WHAT CAUSES 'EXPERIENCING'

THEIR OWN BIAS NEVER SEEMS TO BEAR THE SLIGHETEST ONUS, DESPITE THE HUMBLING OF THAT BIAS OVER THE LAST CENTURY OF ANIMAL AND NOW PLANT RESEARCH, WHICH SHOWS ALL SORTS OF COGNITION, THAT IS FUNCTION, WE CONSIDERED ONLY OURS.

aND SO SINCE WE CONFLATE FUNCTION AND REACTOIN WITH CONSCIOUSNESS WE GRANT - HOW GOOD OF US - CONSCIOUSNESS TO ANIMALS AND NOW BEGIN TO CONSIDER GRANTING IT, IN SOME LIMITED VERSION TO PLANTS.

OF COURSE CONSCOUSNESS NEED NOT BE LIKE SMALLER AND SMALLER WATTAGES. tHE SEA LION OR THE TREE MAY EXPERIENCE JUST AS FULLY AS A HUMAN COUNTERPART, BUT LACK SPECIALIZED FUNCTIONS - LIKE CERTAIN KINDS OF SELF CONSCOUSNESS OR HIGHER PIAGET STAGES OR TYPES OF MEMORY OR RATIONAL REASONING OR WHATEVER. IOW THE CONITIVE PROCESSES WITHIN CONSCIOUSNESS. LIKE SAYING THAT SOMEONE IN A WHEELCHAIR DOES NOT LIFE A PHYSICAL LIFE OR DOES A LESS INTENSE ONE BECAUSE THE VARIOUS FUNCTIONS ARE LESS. hOWEVER THE EXPERIENCING MAY WELL BE AND i ASSUME IT IS JUST AS FULL AND INTENSE WITHOUT THE SURFING AND TANGO CLASSES.

FUNCTION AND CONSCOIUSNESS ARE ALWASY CONFLATED.

JUST LIKE THE FUCKING CHRISTIAN COLONIALIST RACISTS COMING TO THE NEW WORLD. wE SEE NOT i AND FEEL SUPERIOR AND ABOUT THINGS WE HAVE NO REASON TO.

GREAT, WE CAN BUILD CANNONS, THAT DOESN'T MEAN THE NATIVES ARE ANY LESS HUMAN, WITH PROFOUND DEPTHS TO THEIR HEARTS AND AS MUCH EXPERIENCERS AS WE ARE.

THE PATIENTS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE PSYCH WARD AND THEY THINK THEY ARE SO FUCKING RATIONAL.

Almost everyone agrees that there will be very strong correlations between what's in the brain and consciousness, ... The question is what kind of explanation that will give you. We want more than correlation, we want explanation -- how and why do brain process give rise to consciousness? That's the big mystery.

David Chalmers

Chalmers believes the brain "gives rise" to consciousness (as he puts it). And yes he has spent years looking for an explanation as opposed to mere correlation between "when neural circuits (or as he puts it: NCC or "neural correlate of consciousness") x, y, and z functions, the subject has a vivid memory of driving in the rain for a carton of milk on December 4th, 1987".

This is the correlation. For some reason, when electrons play a game of "musical chairs" and march one behind the other in a direction going from axons to dendrites along the outer shell of atoms that currently make up every neuron collectively making up NCCs x, y, and z. For some reason, rather than have a visual experience of one rock climbing, a tactile experience of touching velvet in a clothing store, or one smelling pizza, etc., when these neurons function the person has memory of driving in the rain for a carton of milk on Dec. 4th 1987.

There's really no reason, if brains give rise to consciousness, that those neurons should give rise to this particular memory. It's entirely arbitrary they "just happen" to have that ability.

The neurons responsible for producing the memory look nothing like the memory of driving in the rain. You can't mistake the image of someone driving in the rain for neurons, which are trapped in a skull.

Then there's the question of where the memory was, and why it wasn't experienced before NCCs x, y, and z functioned, and if the memory DID NOT EXIST or was in physical form in the form of biological material, how did NCCs x,y, and z "get" the memory in the first place, given that the neurons themselves are made up something that is not subjective experience and the memory consists or is made up of subjective experience?

I don't think these things can be explained....because it leads to conclusions in which "we are got into fairy land" (Hume).________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Reply to Karpel Tunnel:

Ummm...okay.

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:THE PATIENTS HAVE TAKEN OVER THE PSYCH WARD AND THEY THINK THEY ARE SO FUCKING RATIONAL.

Still, however we differentiate the patients from the doctors in the psyche ward, it is necessary to differentiate what we think we know about conscious minds being rational about the afterlife, and what we can demonstrate that all rational minds are obligated to think is rational too.

And inherent in that is the mystery that Chalmers notes regarding the relationship between the human brain and human consciousness.

Until that is wholly grasped much of what is communicated here is reflected in one or another intellectual contraption going around and around tautologically in the "definition logic" of folks like James Saint.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Almost everyone agrees that there will be very strong correlations between what's in the brain and consciousness, ... The question is what kind of explanation that will give you. We want more than correlation, we want explanation -- how and why do brain process give rise to consciousness? That's the big mystery.

David Chalmers

Chalmers believes the brain "gives rise" to consciousness (as he puts it). And yes he has spent years looking for an explanation as opposed to mere correlation between "when neural circuits (or as he puts it: NCC or "neural correlate of consciousness") x, y, and z functions, the subject has a vivid memory of driving in the rain for a carton of milk on December 4th, 1987".

This is the correlation. For some reason, when electrons play a game of "musical chairs" and march one behind the other in a direction going from axons to dendrites along the outer shell of atoms that currently make up every neuron collectively making up NCCs x, y, and z. For some reason, rather than have a visual experience of one rock climbing, a tactile experience of touching velvet in a clothing store, or one smelling pizza, etc., when these neurons function the person has memory of driving in the rain for a carton of milk on Dec. 4th 1987.

Yes, there are all of these genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions that unfold inside the human brain whenever we think or feel or say or do anything.

And that includes contemplating and creating posts about the afterlife. But we still do not grasp these relationships going all the way back to an understanding of why anything exists at at all. And why it is this thing and not another thing.

Or, rather, no one has yet succeeded in convincing me that they grasp them.

And, as I noted on the part one thread, I appreciate your attempts to "think this through". And then to offer up your own introspective conjectures.

But [to me] it's still largely just an argument. There does not appear to be any substantive evidence for the afterlife here that can be integrated into an actual context such that flesh and blood human beings can go about the business of demonstrating that what they think is true about it in their head is in fact the way it is. The "come here, let me show you" kind of evidence.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:There's really no reason, if brains give rise to consciousness, that those neurons should give rise to this particular memory. It's entirely arbitrary they "just happen" to have that ability.

That we don't know the reason is not the same as there not being one. Only when we come to grips with all of the "unknown unknowns" embedded in the evolution of matter into mind, are all those things that appear to be entirely arbitrary likely to be seen as considerably less so.

Or maybe they are even entirely necessary reasons.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Yes, there are all of these genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions that unfold inside the human brain whenever we think or feel or say or do anything.

But these genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions are all percepts, or things consisting only of the experience of one experiencing them (in neuroscientific, medical, or criminal context). We don't know if there are mind-independent analogs of brains and brain function outside the artificial reality experienced by the non-embodied mind (biblical spirit) calling itself or that is called a "human being".

And, as I noted on the part one thread, I appreciate your attempts to "think this through". And then to offer up your own introspective conjectures.

But [to me] it's still largely just an argument. There does not appear to be any substantive evidence for the afterlife here that can be integrated into an actual context such that flesh and blood human beings can go about the business of demonstrating that what they think is true about it in their head is in fact the way it is. The "come here, let me show you" kind of evidence.

And there can never be "let me show you" evidence of the afterlife, because the afterlife if it exists lies outside the artificial reality that is human consciousness. It exists in human consciousness only in the form of an idea that a person believes has independent existence in the external world. I easily concede that "support" for the existence of the afterlife only consists of argument that may or may not successfully demonstrate its logical possibility. Multiverses are in the same boat, as are mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:There's really no reason, if brains give rise to consciousness, that those neurons should give rise to this particular memory. It's entirely arbitrary they "just happen" to have that ability.

That we don't know the reason is not the same as there not being one. Only when we come to grips with all of the "unknown unknowns" embedded in the evolution of matter into mind, are all those things that appear to be entirely arbitrary likely to be seen as considerably less so.

Or maybe they are even entirely necessary reasons.

But there is no evidence of the existence of matter or mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, thus no possibility of ever knowing its existence or discovering its evolution into mind. Why? Because the only thing that appears within existence, the only thing that has ever appeared within existence, is a person and that which the person experiences (mind). Matter, that which is not a person and that which the person experiences, the imaginary substance that existed for eternity prior to brains producing consciousness (for those believing brains create consciousness) has never appeared within existence.

Why torture your brain to justify the course of nature upon suppositions which, for aught you know, may be entirely imaginary?

-David Hume

We therefore have no reason, based on the evidence of what actually shows itself to exist (a person and the artificial reality the person experiences), to suppose much less assert the existence of something that in terms of material substance is something other than the substance making up that which actually shows itself to exist (persons and that which persons experience).

Given there is no evidence of the existence of unconscious matter, there is no reason to place unconscious matter in the equation of existence as it is impossible to know it even exists (as we can only experience experience), much less use make-believe to assert its existence and its purported evolution into a subjectively experiencing person and that which the person privately and subjectively experiences. One must remember that unconscious matter, its evolution into mind, and whether or not the process is arbitrary or necessary is entirely imaginary. How do we know this? Because the only thing we have evidence of existing is subjectively experience in the form of a subjectively experiencing person and the subjective experiences of that person.

There will never be a time that it will be or can be seen or shown that unconscious matter exists and has anything to do with the existence of consciousness, because the only thing that shows that it exists is consciousness. We do not need to postulate or posit something other than consciousness to explain existence: consciousness is the only thing we need because in terms of empirical evidence of the existence of something, it is the only thing that demonstrates existence.

Indeed, the idea of unconscious matter and its imaginary relation to consciousness may fundamentally arise from disbelief that subjective experience is eternal.

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.

Yes, there are all of these genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions that unfold inside the human brain whenever we think or feel or say or do anything.

But these genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions are all percepts, or things consisting only of the experience of one experiencing them (in neuroscientific, medical, or criminal context). We don't know if there are mind-independent analogs of brains and brain function outside the artificial reality experienced by the non-embodied mind (biblical spirit) calling itself or that is called a "human being".

But what does this mean "for all practical purposes" relating to the interactions of men and women out in a particular world? And then "for all practical purposes" how that is pertinent to the afterlife?

For me, it's always about the extent to which someone is able to take their own assessment [however sophisticated it might appear as an intellectual contraption] "down to earth". Something more substantive that I might be able to experience myself.

Always back to this:

And, as I noted on the part one thread, I appreciate your attempts to "think this through". And then to offer up your own introspective conjectures.

But [to me] it's still largely just an argument. There does not appear to be any substantive evidence for the afterlife here that can be integrated into an actual context such that flesh and blood human beings can go about the business of demonstrating that what they think is true about it in their head is in fact the way it is. The "come here, let me show you" kind of evidence.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote: And there can never be "let me show you" evidence of the afterlife, because the afterlife if it exists lies outside the artificial reality that is human consciousness.

Okay, fair enough. As an intellectual contraption this may well be in sync with a full and complete understanding of existence itself. But the reality produced by my own consciousness [whether autonomous or wholly determined] seems anything but artificial given all of the things [like my responsibilities to pay the bills] I either take seriously or risk truly calamitous consequences. Just consider the reality of all those federal employees here in America. How artificial do you suppose they think their own consciousness is here and now?

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:There's really no reason, if brains give rise to consciousness, that those neurons should give rise to this particular memory. It's entirely arbitrary they "just happen" to have that ability.

That we don't know the reason is not the same as there not being one. Only when we come to grips with all of the "unknown unknowns" embedded in the evolution of matter into mind, are all those things that appear to be entirely arbitrary likely to be seen as considerably less so.

Or maybe they are even entirely necessary reasons.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote: But there is no evidence of the existence of matter or mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, thus no possibility of ever knowing its existence or discovering its evolution into mind. Why? Because the only thing that appears within existence, the only thing that has ever appeared within existence, is a person and that which the person experiences (mind). Matter, that which is not a person and that which the person experiences, the imaginary substance that existed for eternity prior to brains producing consciousness (for those believing brains create consciousness) has never appeared within existence.

Here of course neuroscience would have to weigh in on what is deemed to be or not to be hard evidence of any number of things. And then how the dots are connected between that harder evidence and the afterlife.

Today, more than a century after the Society for Psychical Research was founded, a debate rages over the question of life after death, with science, including brain science, invoked by both sides.

Not much in the way of "hard evidence" to convince me of the existence of an afterlife. But clearly enough for others.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote: There will never be a time that it will be or can be seen or shown that unconscious matter exists and has anything to do with the existence of consciousness, because the only thing that shows that it exists is consciousness. We do not need to postulate or posit something other than consciousness to explain existence: consciousness is the only thing we need because in terms of empirical evidence of the existence of something, it is the only thing that demonstrates existence.

Indeed, the idea of unconscious matter and its imaginary relation to consciousness may fundamentally arise from disbelief that subjective experience is eternal.

My guess is that there are any number of folks who might dispute this. But most of us [myself included] are simply not educated/informed enough to respond in any really sophisticated manner.

So it all comes down to someone being able to actually demonstrate what consciousness either is or is not in the context of what existence itself either is or is not.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:Yes, there are all of these genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions that unfold inside the human brain whenever we think or feel or say or do anything.

But these genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions are all percepts, or things consisting only of the experience of one experiencing them (in neuroscientific, medical, or criminal context). We don't know if there are mind-independent analogs of brains and brain function outside the artificial reality experienced by the non-embodied mind (biblical spirit) calling itself or that is called a "human being".

But what does this mean "for all practical purposes" relating to the interactions of men and women out in a particular world? And then "for all practical purposes" how that is pertinent to the afterlife?

For me, it's always about the extent to which someone is able to take their own assessment [however sophisticated it might appear as an intellectual contraption] "down to earth". Something more substantive that I might be able to experience myself.

It means that one's experience and one's experience of things that appear only in the form of one's point of view of it is the only thing that appears to exist. There is no evidence of the existence of things not made up of one's experience of them (say, mind-independent analogs of genetic/biological/chemical/neurological interactions that unfold inside mind-independent brains, for example, or even mind-independent chairs, buildings, mountains, galaxies, etc.). Thus for all practical purposes humans are non-embodied minds or biblical spirits: all interactions, environments, objects, etc. experienced by the spirit is an artificial reality or "Matrix" of the spirit's experience of itself "in" or "having" a particular body, reacting with particular individuals, and experiencing a particular world (the world composed of the spirit's subjective experience, that the spirit is forced to experience).

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:And there can never be "let me show you" evidence of the afterlife, because the afterlife if it exists lies outside the artificial reality that is human consciousness.

Okay, fair enough. As an intellectual contraption this may well be in sync with a full and complete understanding of existence itself. But the reality produced by my own consciousness [whether autonomous or wholly determined] seems anything but artificial given all of the things [like my responsibilities to pay the bills] I either take seriously or risk truly calamitous consequences. Just consider the reality of all those federal employees here in America. How artificial do you suppose they think their own consciousness is here and now?

Well, it's artificial in the sense that the things one experiences is entirely arbitrary in terms of the things that "just so" happens to exist in one's experience, if there are no such things as mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception. If there are no mind-independent chairs, for example, the chairs you experience are arbitrarily existing objects composed of your subjective experience, that are participants in the particular world you are forced to experience; they exist for no other reason than that they are particular objects that happen to form form and appear within your particular consciousness. The same can be said for the arbitrary existence of bills and the consequences for not paying them, the predicament of federal employees in America thanks to the actions of that guy, and so on.

Here of course neuroscience would have to weigh in on what is deemed to be or not to be hard evidence of any number of things. And then how the dots are connected between that harder evidence and the afterlife.

Interesting read with interesting information regarding G. M. Woerlee's experiences with dying patients, the process of dying, and his conclusion that NDE's involve some latent or minimal function of the brain with seems to support minimal consciousness, and therefore NDE's.

In regard to Woerlee's conclusion:

Woerlee concludes Mortal Minds in a conﬁdent but sober mood:

I had learned the true nature of death. I had learned what I will experience as I die. I had learned I have no soul. My mind is a product of the functioning of my body, so my mind will die with my body, and I will not live for eternity in a life after death... After all, the knowledge and analysis presented in this book ﬁnally does away with all the hope, and all the comfort afforded by uncertainty about the possibility of a life after death, as well as ﬁnally demolishing many ancient belief systems forming my upbringing.

These insights and conclusions may leave the author with a certain peace, but I am not so sure they will have the same effect on most readers. Clearly there is reason to agree with Woerlee that the visual and emotional elements of NDEs appear to correspond, often in a striking way, with changes taking place in the body during the last stages of dying.

There is no soul that separates from the body and leaves the body behind because the body is an aspect of an artificial reality experienced by the mind. Woerlee's conclusion depends, ultimately, upon the existence of a mind-independent (albeit non-functional) body and brain that survives the ephemeral and immaterial mind, which purportedly ceases to exist when the mind-independent brain and body ceases to function.

But we have no evidence of the existence of mind-independent brains and bodies, and I have amply demonstrated how mind-independent brains and bodies, were they to exist, could logically have no part in forming consciousness or the things (like experienced brains and bodies) that appear in consciousness. Mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual experience in the process of perception only send mind-independent signals to mind-independent brains, upon whom they ultimately depend to produce conscious "copies" of themselves in the artificial reality that is human, animal, or insect consciousness (if animals and insects are not philosopher's zombies).

But given there is no evidence of the existence of mind-independent brains, much less consciousness-creating brain function, there is only consciousness in the form of persons that appear to exist. A person dying before Woerlee's eyes, then is simply his non-embodied mind experiencing an artificial reality in which his avatar, a POV experience of himself peering out from a POV experience of his (artificial) body, observes a body on a table (a body, mind you, composed of Woerlee's consciousness as opposed to something that is not Woerlee's consciousness) that has ceased to function, and thereby can no longer report NDE's.

Woerlee's observation that his mind will die when his body dies is based on the inability of patients to report NDEs when their brain ceases to function and they lie inanimate on the slab. But correlations between still-functioning minimal brain-states and NDEs (implying that NDEs despite their content are just creations of a dying brain) and inference of the non-existence of consciousness due to non-responsiveness to external stimuli of a dead body, ultimately depend upon the existence of mind-independent doppelgangers of the brain and the ability of mind-independent brains to create consciousness.

If there are no mind-independent doppelgangers of the brain and if mind-independent brains cannot logically create consciousness, inference of brain-function in a still-living individual reporting NDEs and loss of NDE report and inferred consciousness due to cessation of brain function are all part of an artificial reality experienced by Woerlee's non-embodied mind or spirit.

The joke is that there is no soul within a body but a body within a soul--in the form of a body composed of the subjective experience of the non-embodied mind or spirit the latter experiences as a particular object in the particular artificial subjective world (composed of its consciousness) the spirit has no choice but to experience.

phenomenal_graffiti wrote:There will never be a time that it will be or can be seen or shown that unconscious matter exists and has anything to do with the existence of consciousness, because the only thing that shows that it exists is consciousness. We do not need to postulate or posit something other than consciousness to explain existence: consciousness is the only thing we need because in terms of empirical evidence of the existence of something, it is the only thing that demonstrates existence.

Indeed, the idea of unconscious matter and its imaginary relation to consciousness may fundamentally arise from disbelief that subjective experience is eternal.

My guess is that there are any number of folks who might dispute this. But most of us [myself included] are simply not educated/informed enough to respond in any really sophisticated manner.

So it all comes down to someone being able to actually demonstrate what consciousness either is or is not in the context of what existence itself either is or is not.

We only have consciousness, so it is probably impossible for that which is not consciousness to appear to show that something other than a person and that which a person experiences exists. Everything that appears, it turns out, must appear in the form of something the person experiences. Unconscious matter is something that is not any person or anything experienced by any person, nor subjective experience itself. It seems that in order to exist or at least in order to appear, a thing must be composed of the subjective experience of someone experiencing it, which, given that only that person is experiencing in according to their perspective and point of view (Schropenhauer), proves the thing exists only as part of the person, in terms of part of the person's consciousness and not something other than that consciousness or something apart from it.

J.BrewerThe Truman Show, 1998 Paramount Pictures

Q: What lies beyond the "Matrix" that is consciousness? A: The conscious and unconscious mind of God.